for The Atlantic. It’s also not the only revelation that’s emerged about this event.
17.05.2023 - 16:45 / deadline.com
Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch compared CNN’s town hall last week with Donald Trump to Fox News’ post-2020 election coverage, the source of the company’s $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems.
“Last week, we can look at it factually, CNN had a town hall with the former president where he made a lot of allegations about the [2020] election,” Murdoch said at the MoffettNathanson Conference. “…If you believe that it was newsworthy to have a former president, also a candidate for the next presidential election, if you believe that was newsworthy in 2023, well certainly it was newsworthy in 2020 to report on similar allegations.”
He said that in the Dominion Voting Systems case, “we were denied our ability to rely on a First Amendment defense, and we were denied an ability to rely on newsworthiness.” The judge in the case, Eric Davis, removed those defenses in a summary judgment decision weeks before a trial was scheduled to star. Davis concluded that those defenses were not supported by case law.
Murdoch said that had the Dominion case gone forward, “we were going to be in a multi-year, prolonged legal battle, which we would ultimately win, but the distraction to the company, the distraction to our growth plans, our management, would have been extraordinarily costly, which is why we decided to settle.” He said that it was a “difficult decision to make but ultimately the right decision, because I don’t believe Fox News or any of our hosts engaged in any defamation the whole period.”
Less than a week after the settlement, the network parted ways with Tucker Carlson, whose show was the top rated primetime show on the news networks.
Murdoch did not go into the reasons for why Carlson was dropped.
“I’m
for The Atlantic. It’s also not the only revelation that’s emerged about this event.
and was unhurt. Sean Hannity, who was hosting the town hall Thursday night, served up the incident as the first topic of the long Q & A session.“I want to start with the current president … did you see the video of when he fell?” Hannity began, diverging from a longstanding journalistic tradition of leading with the most important and relevant information.But Trump failed – at least by his own standards – to capitalize on the opportunity to trash and smear opponent.
CNN has lined up it third Republican presidential town hall. The latest, with former Vice President Mike Pence and Dana Bash as moderator, will air at 9 pm ET June 7, from Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa.
new 9 p.m. host for that bit of crafty dodging.Collins was interviewing John Kirby, national security spokesman for the Biden administration, when she danced this masterful side-step Wednesday:“Just one question on Ukraine before we have another topic for you, John,” Collins said.
Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said CNN is rebuilding itself to be a news network that presents “both sides” of every issue rather than an “advocacy network” — comments coming as CNN continues to face a backlash over the town hall with Donald Trump last week. Zaslav, speaking at the MoffettNathanson Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in New York, said that previously the overall impression of CNN’s brand was “left-leaning.” That’s now changing, he said, citing a new YouGov poll finding an 11-point improvement in U.S. viewers’ trust in CNN. “Our view is, there’s advocacy networks on either side. We have the best journalists in the world. We need to show both sides of every issue,” he said.
Naman Ramachandran Christiane Amanpour has spoken out against Donald Trump’s recent CNN town hall, where he described moderator Kaitlan Collins as a “nasty person.” “We know Trump and his tendencies, everyone does, he just seizes the stage and dominates. No matter how much flack the moderator tries to aim at the incoming, it doesn’t often work. I would have dropped the mic at ‘nasty person,’ but then that’s me,” Amanpour said on Wednesday to the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Amanpour was accepting the Columbia Journalism Award and delivering the school’s commencement speech. Amanpour, who is CNN’s chief international anchor, said she had met with CNN chair and CEO Chris Licht earlier this week and they “had a very robust exchange of views” about the town hall. Licht “welcomed” the exchange but stood by his decision to hold the event, according to Amanpour.
believes they did a public good. Many of CNN’s on-air talent have expressed the same sentiment, including primetime mainstay Anderson Cooper, who the day after the show insisted the town hall informed viewers of things they might not know about Trump — and even, essentially, said critics were being closed-minded.Amanpour didn’t mention Cooper by name, but in her remarks she seemed to respond directly to him. “The fact the American people voted 3 times against Trump and Trumpism — 2018, 2020, 2022 — also speaks volumes,” she said.
among the other cable networks. But just two days later, primetime viewership cratered, putting CNN in fourth place behind shoestring-budgeted right wing cable news channel Newsmax.During primetime on Friday, May 12, CNN scored a dismal 335,000 viewers on average, according to Nielsen.
Donald Trump’s town hall was the hot topic across Sunday political talk shows, including on ABC’s “This Week,” where former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said the audience of Trump supporters looked awfully similar to the ones he saw when he was running for president in 2016.“I don’t care how they introduced them. I know a lot of those people in that audience.
The problem w the Trump Town Hall wasn't platforming…or a fragile siloed audience unable to be exposed to newsworthy opinions antithetical to their own…the problem was an event that was clearly negotiated to Trump's approval. An ode to access.I learned nothing from this town hall about Trump and his most ardent supporters I haven't known since 2016.
founding partner and senior correspondent at Puck, tweeted that Darcy and his editor had been “summoned” to a meeting with Licht and “top executives in which they told him that his coverage of Trump town hall had been too emotional and stressed the importance of remaining dispassionate.”SCOOP @PuckNews: CNN's Chris Licht summoned @OliverDarcy and his editor to a meeting with himself and top executives in which they told him that his coverage of Trump town hall had been too emotional and stressed the importance of remaining dispassionate: https://t.co/R0dgcOmgGaStrongly contradicting his own network’s full-throated defense of the event, Darcy slammed the town hall as a “spectacle of lies” that, he implied, did harm to the country.“It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” Darcy said in an installment of his Reliable Sources newsletter, which came just 15 minutes after CNN released a statement essentially bragging about the event.“Trump lied about the 2020 election. He took no responsibility for the January 6 insurrection that those very lies incited.
that he hated Donald Trump “passionately.” But less than 2 months earlier he was singing a dramatically different tune, newly leaked texts reveal. In an exchange with his senior producer, obtained by the Daily Beast — yes, it’s yet more leaked evidence that emerged during discovery in the Dominion defamation lawsuit against Fox News — the recently fired host was so upset about the unusually negative coverage Fox was giving Trump that he said he was “happy to start threating people” to make it stop.The text exchange happened Nov. 19, 2020, as Fox News was suffering a severe drop in ratings caused by the exodus of viewers angry that it had (accurately) called the election for Joe Biden and then — temporarily — refused to support Trump’s constant lying about the loss.
the pile of people who believe the the Donald Trump town hall CNN aired on Wednesday was a disastrous mistake. On Thursday’s episode of “All-In,” Hayes laid out in great detail why he thinks it was such a bad idea for CNN to give the disgraced ex-president such a prominent platform.
@acyn on Twitter).“About last night: the 70 minutes I spent on stage in New Hampshire with former President Donald Trump was a major inflection point in the Republican party’s search for its nominee, and potentially the starting line for America’s next presidential race,” Collins said.“It’s important to remember that he is, right now, the GOP front-runner, that he running, as noted, while being criminally indicted, found civilly liable and under investigation for everything from his handling of classified documents to his business empire.”Collins’ comments come as CNN remains at the center of a heavy backlash over the Trump town hall. That backlash is complex, but the unifying point is that it was an irresponsible mistake at every level.
For the third time today, a prominent figure at CNN attempted to reframe the network’s roundly-criticized town hall with former president Donald Trump on Wednesday night, an event moderated by Kaitlyn Collins.
pic.twitter.com/xzVEgaGeDTRead Cooper’s full remarks below:Many of you have expressed deep anger and disappointment. Many of you are upset that someone who attempted to destroy our democracy was invited to sit on the stage in front of a crowd of Republican voters to answer questions and predictably continue to spew lie after lie after lie.And I get it. It was disturbing.
CNN’s town hall with Donald Trump beat the cable news competition, as expected, with an average of 3.12 million viewers, according to early Nielsen numbers.
CNN’s polarizing town hall with Donald Trump Wednesday evening, is expected to take over the network’s 9 p.m. primetime spot, according to media reports.Collins, who currently co-anchors “CNN This Morning” alongside solely co-anchor Poppy Harlow after Don Lemon was ousted from the network last month, is likely to move into the vacant time slot, which has not had a permanent host in over a year.Puck first reported the news, and no official announcement has been made.
drew wide criticisms, including from CNN employees, Alyssa Farah Griffin wasn’t among the voices thrashing the event. In fact, the host of “The View” defended the broadcast on Thursday morning, arguing that Trump lost votes because of it.Naturally, the town hall was the first of the day’s Hot Topics, with most of the hosts torching it.
During yesterday’s episode of The View, co-host Joy Behar disagreed with fellow panelist Sunny Hostin’s objection to CNN’s town hall event featuring Donald Trump.